Month: November 2018

Arizona became a purple state in 2018

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Despite all the gloom and doom post-election day reporting here in Arizona about Democrats having squandered their voter enthusiasm and record turnout, as we approach all the votes finally being counted it appears that Democrats had a very good night after all in turning Arizona purple.

Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has won the U.S. Senate seat for Democrats for the first time in almost 30 years, and becomes the first woman to serve Arizona in the U.S. Senate.

Former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick took back CD 2 for the Democrats, giving Democrats a 5-4 lead in Arizona’s congressional delegation.

Nationally, Democrats have currently picked up 31 seats to take back the Congress, with a number of races still to be counted in which Democrats lead in most of those races. See, FiveThirtyEight, We’re Tracking The Unresolved Midterm Races. Yes, there was a “blue wave” election. Democrats could win 40 House seats, the most since Watergate.

UPDATE: As of  November 14, the Democratic lead in the U.S. House popular vote stood at 7.1%, though it may yet inch higher. For comparison purposes, note that in 2010 — which was widely seen as a GOP “wave” cycle — Republicans won the U.S. House popular vote by 6.6%. (h/t Maddow Blog).

While there remain votes to be counted, it is increasingly apparent that Democratic state senator Katie Hobbs will be elected Secretary of State. She currently leads political neophyte and Trumpster Steve Gaynor by 5,667 votes. Hobbs’s vote total has increased with each day of vote counting since election day, and that trend is likely to continue.

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Oh No She Didn’t!

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Cross-posted from RestoreReason.com. AZ Capitol Times reported today that in response to a Save Our Schools suggestion that voucher expansion should be “sidelined” while the battle for public education funding continues, Kim Martinez, a spokeswoman for the American Federation For Children, said she was “unimpressed”. Martinez also said that, “It is unfortunate that Save Our … Read more

The fix is in to appoint Martha McSally to the Senate? (Updated)

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I made the point in a post last week, Does Martha McSally have a Plan B?

If Arizona voters reject Martha McSally for the senate in today’s election, it would be an affront to Arizona voters to reward her with a consolation prize of being appointed to Sen.McCain’s seat in December, an appointed term that would run through 2020.

Now, I would expect that resident GOP apologist at the Arizona Republic, Robert Robb, would make the argument that appointing McSally to McCain’s seat is perfectly fine, the will of the voters be damned.

But surprisingly this intellectually dishonest argument is being made today by The Republic’s Laurie Roberts. 1 million voters can’t be wrong. Appoint Martha McSally to the Senate, Gov. Ducey:

It’s Day Seven of election night in Arizona and it’s clear that Democrat Kyrsten Sinema soon will be called Sen. Sinema.

While Republican Party leaders try to regain their temporarily (I hope) lost sanity and get over it, consider this:

Republican Martha McSally soon could be called Sen. McSally.

More than one million Arizona voters wanted to see the former fighter-pilot-turned-southern-Arizona congresswoman in the Senate.

Gov. Doug Ducey could grant them their wish.

Ducey could appoint McSally to the late Sen. John McCain’s Senate seat, the one that placeholder Jon Kyl is expected to leave by year’s end.

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New Rules needed for media coverage of election night and beyond

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Elections have long since ceased to be a one day event in America. Most states offer early voting in some form, and California and Arizona in particular offer relatively easy early voting by mail which invariably leads to voters turning in their mail-in ballots on Election Day. That in turn requires time for election officials to verify voter signatures and to count the ballots. It takes time to do it correctly, fairly and accurately.

The numbers the media breathlessly reports in their election night coverage and endlessly speculates about in their media consortium projections are actually a disservice to Americans on Election Day. The media want finality in the limited time frame they have set aside for election night coverage, which is unrealistic and impossible.

It can lead to candidates and political parties leading in those early election night results later concocting unsupported wild conspiracy theories about election fraud when ballots verified and counted in the days and weeks after election night swing to their opponent, as has occurred here in Arizona with Rep. Martha McSally, The Arizona Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in the U.S. Senate race.

The ultimate consequence of this is to undermine public confidence in our election system and election results.

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Senator Sinema

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By Michael Bryan Kyrsten Sinema has won the election. There is no official count yet, nor any victory announcement or concession. But with a 30K vote lead for Sinema and about 200K ballots left to count, McSally would have to win the remaining vote by 15%; that’s just not going to happen. The race is … Read more